History of New York City Research Papers (original) (raw)

There are several buildings in The Bronx that were built in the early twentieth century and which now stand as vestiges of an era when the borough served as a center of charitable "homes" that provided refuge and aid to people with... more

There are several buildings in The Bronx that were built in the early twentieth century and which now stand as vestiges of an era when the borough served as a center of charitable "homes" that provided refuge and aid to people with special needs.

Black public-affairs television programming in New York City between 1967 and 1968 happened because of a convergence of several factors. They include (a) the upheavals in urban America between 1964 and 1967, (b) the release of the Report... more

Black public-affairs television programming in New York City
between 1967 and 1968 happened because of a convergence
of several factors. They include (a) the upheavals in urban
America between 1964 and 1967, (b) the release of the Report
of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (a.k.a.,
the Kerner Commission report) and (c) the assassination of
Martin Luther King, the latter two both within months of
each other in 1968. Other equally important factors include
the organic development of Black American-owned and
Black American-oriented media—newspapers and radio
outlets buttressed and informed by more than a century of
Black Left/Nationalist/Pan-Africanist/integrationist intellectual
thought and African-centered/Afrocentric ideology. Using and
critiquing the emerging scholarship on such programming, a
brief historical review of the creation and development of 4==
such shows in 1967 and 1968—WABC-TV’s Like It Is, WNEW-TV’s
Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, and National Educational Television’s
two locally produced (but nationally broadcast) programs, Black
Journal and Soul!—shows that these programs sought to correct
the Kerner Commission’s critique that the American mass media
show “a White man’s world” by attempting to show, for the first
time, a Black world to large mainstream broadcast markets.

American observational documentary pioneer D.A. Pennebaker traces his embrace of film-making as a ‘witnessing process’ that allows him to reach a unique understanding of his subjects in this conversation on several rarely discussed films:... more

American observational documentary pioneer D.A. Pennebaker traces his embrace of film-making as a ‘witnessing process’ that allows him to reach a unique understanding of his subjects in this conversation on several rarely discussed films: the highly formative early shorts Baby (1954) and Daybreak Express
(1953–1957), the Drew Associates oddity David (1961), as well as Wild 90 (1968), Eat the Document (1972) and 1 P.M. (1972) – collaborations with Norman Mailer, Bob Dylan and Jean-Luc Godard, respectively. He addresses the meaning of cinéma vérité, Godard’s ‘reckless’ approach to film-making, and the sadness behind his second, and ultimately abandoned, collaboration with Dylan.

Robert Moses'ın radikal yaklaşımlarının dünün ve bugünün NewYork'una etkileri

Founded in March 1946, Harlem, New York’s Lafargue Mental Hygiene Clinic was the first outpatient psychiatric clinic established in and for a black community in the United States. The result of a collaboration among the psychiatrist and... more

Founded in March 1946, Harlem, New York’s Lafargue Mental Hygiene Clinic was the first outpatient psychiatric clinic established in and for a black community in the United States. The result of a collaboration among the psychiatrist and social critic Dr. Fredric Wertham, writer Richard Wright, and clergyman Rev. Shelton Hale Bishop, the clinic was both a practical response to the need for low-cost psychotherapy and counseling for black residents of New York City (many of whom were newly-arrived migrants) and a radical precursor to nation-wide campaigns to address disparities in the mental healthcare of African Americans. This article places the Lafargue Clinic’s history and legacy in conversation with the fraught role of race in the history of psychotherapy—fraught in the sense of how concepts of race and practices of racism have played a determining role in how established American psychiatry has approached the treatment of racialized populations and how these populations have experienced their encounters and/or exclusions from psychiatric mental healthcare.

The Tweed Ring spawned a vibrant financial sector that was integral to its brief success but has never been previously examined. William “Boss” Tweed and his allies employed banks controlled or comanaged by Tammany politicians to... more

The Tweed Ring spawned a vibrant financial sector that was integral to its brief success but has never been previously examined. William “Boss” Tweed and his allies employed banks controlled or comanaged by Tammany politicians to embezzle funds, build political alliances, and invest in a wide array of business ventures. The capital of these savings and commercial banks—city money, deposits from Catholic charities, and the savings of immigrant laborers—was accumulated through political channels. During their operation between 1867 and 1871, politician-bankers engaged in a mix of patronage deals and profit-driven financial speculation. In effect, Tammany banks were ground zero for the Ring's conversion of political hegemony into a windfall of economic capital that fueled party activities and buoyed personal fortunes. Importantly, the anti-Ring mobilization by upper-class reformers was more than a revolt of wealthy taxpayers concerned with abstract goals of good government or rescuing city credit; it was also a reaction by old-line bankers in direct competition with Tammany upstarts. A dramatic bank run catalyzed by reformers in November 1871 drove them into bankruptcy, bringing this novel experiment in political capitalism to an end.

This article undertakes a "history of the present" as a means of intervening in current debate around the closure of the Rikers Island jail complex and its replacement with smaller "state of the art" jails. We argue that the telling of... more

This article undertakes a "history of the present" as a means of intervening in current debate around the closure of the Rikers Island jail complex and its replacement with smaller "state of the art" jails. We argue that the telling of carceral history is potentially a powerful weapon capable of shaping unfolding events, as well as, helping to preserve the memory of those who have suffered from the practice of human caging. To this effect we reconstruct the history of the Rikers Island penal colony predating its officially-recognized opening in 1935; a history defined by the forced prison labour that was used to expand the island and construct the original penitentiary. We illustrate how the labour of these prisoners, lives on in the physical structure of Rikers, as well as in its scandalous carceral existence. In defiance of current efforts at piecemeal reform or of preserving the status quo, we offer this historical intervention as a means of problematizing the present effort to solve the problems of jails with more jails, suggesting instead that the past calls for more drastic action—an escape.

New York City's streets, parks, museums, architecture, and its people appear in an array of literary works published from New York's earliest settlement to the present day. The exploration of the city as both a symbol and as a reality has... more

New York City's streets, parks, museums, architecture, and its people appear in an array of literary works published from New York's earliest settlement to the present day. The exploration of the city as both a symbol and as a reality has formed the basis of New York's literature. Using the themes of adaptation, innovation, identity, and hope, this history explores novels, poetry, periodicals, and newspapers to examine how New York's literature can be understood through the notion of movement. From the periodicals of the nineteenth century, the Arabic writers of the city in the early twentieth century, the literature of homelessness, childhood, and the spaces of tragedy and resilience within the metropolis, this diverse assessment opens up new areas of research within urban literature. It provides an innovative examination of how writing has shaped the lives of New Yorkers and how writing about the city has shaped the modern world.

Partint d’unes informacions transmeses dins la família de l’autor de la comunicació, més concretament del nostre repadrí Gabriel Arbona Arbona, que havia emigrat a Nova York, es va voler estirar el fil de quins havien estats els... more

Partint d’unes informacions transmeses dins la família de l’autor de la comunicació, més concretament del nostre repadrí Gabriel Arbona Arbona, que havia emigrat a Nova York, es va voler estirar el fil de quins havien estats els montuïrers que havien abandonat la vila del Pla de Mallorca per traslladar-se als Estats Units i en quines circumstàncies ho havien fet.
La principal font en la qual s’ha basat l’estudi és el registre de passatgers d’Ellis Island, que es pot consultar en línia a l’adreça <www.libertyellisfoundation.org>. Posterioment, les informacions s’han completat mitjançant fonts orals, consultes al Registre Civil i als padrons de població de l’Arxiu Municipal de Montuïri i entrevistes i articles publicats a la revista Bona Pau.
L’estudi se centra gairebé totalment en l’emigració montuïrera a Nova York durant el primer terç del segle XX, tot i que al final s’afegeixen dos casos de la segona meitat del segle passat.

Turning the table on the critics, a salsa musician writes about the writings on music, becoming a critic himself during the process. Having played in at least one of the famous salsa bands mentioned in each of the books he considers, the... more

Turning the table on the critics, a salsa musician writes about the writings on music, becoming a critic himself during the process. Having played in at least one of the famous salsa bands mentioned in each of the books he considers, the musician sets out with the presumption that the critics will have nothing new to tell him. Picking his way along the printed pages, he discovers answers to some of the questions that plagued him during salsa's golden age, as well as newly significant aspects of a musical style that has lasted long enough to be heard by the children of its original audience. Some mysteries remain, however; the critics cannot agree on who plays this music authentically, who knows how to listen to it, and why. In the end, it may turn out that the music will create its own listeners: the interbred offspring of salsa's varied listeners who are as difficult to categorize as the music.

SILENT BEACHES transports the reader into the extraordinary past and present embedded in New York City's more than 600 miles of coastline through a stunning selection of rare photographs, history, new fiction and poetry, and contemporary... more

SILENT BEACHES transports the reader into the extraordinary past and present embedded in New York City's more than 600 miles of coastline through a stunning selection of rare photographs, history, new fiction and poetry, and contemporary art. Eric W. Sanderson, author of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City, calls it a "fascinating and poignant combination," a portrait of "New York City on the margins. In the early 21st century city we are so focused on growth, and the consequences of that growth, for better or worse, that we forget how the city also leaves places and people behind. Sandy Ground, Hart Island, Gowanus Creek, Dead Horse Bay, and other off-the-beaten track locales, remind us that abandonment, decay, isolation, and death, are also part of our experience on this particular verge between land and sea. You and your contributors give voice to the bright dreams and restless forces that transform."
Please contact alberte@stjohns.edu for a pdf of the full text

Examining three interconnected case studies, Tamar Carroll powerfully demonstrates the ability of grassroots community activism to bridge racial and cultural differences and effect social change. Drawing on a rich array of oral histories,... more

Examining three interconnected case studies, Tamar Carroll powerfully demonstrates the ability of grassroots community activism to bridge racial and cultural differences and effect social change. Drawing on a rich array of oral histories, archival records, newspapers, films, and photographs from post-World War II New York City, Carroll shows how poor people transformed the antipoverty organization Mobilization for Youth and shaped the subsequent War on Poverty. Highlighting the little-known National Congress of Neighborhood Women, she reveals the significant participation of working-class white ethnic women and women of color in New York City's feminist activism. Finally, Carroll traces the partnership between the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and Women's Health Action Mobilization (WHAM!), showing how gay men and feminists collaborated to create a supportive community for those affected by the epidemic, to improve health care, and to oppose homophobia and misogyny during the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s. Carroll contends that social policies that encourage the political mobilization of marginalized groups and foster coalitions across identity differences are the most effective means of solving social problems and realizing democracy.

Covering the Akoustolith and Guastavino tiling used at the famed cathedral church, Saint John the Divine, New York City, this paper looks at the acoustical impact of large scale implementation throughout the USA and in particular this... more

Covering the Akoustolith and Guastavino tiling used at the famed cathedral church, Saint John the Divine, New York City, this paper looks at the acoustical impact of large scale implementation throughout the USA and in particular this cathedral. One stakeholder, an organ curator, was able to effect change after a catastrophic fire in 2001 allowed for an entire restoration through insurance funds. This paper covers Douglass Hunt's amateur background and subsequent expertise that allowed him to steward the closing up of the Akoustolith tile, effecting significant acoustic gain and reverberation for the future of the choir and music accompaniment of the church.

New York’s fiscal decline in the 1970’s was radically reversed in the wake of financial deregulation and electronic trading in the 1980s. No architects and urbanists at that time anticipated the transformations the introduction of new... more

New York’s fiscal decline in the 1970’s was radically reversed in the wake of financial deregulation and electronic trading in the 1980s. No architects and urbanists at that time anticipated the transformations the introduction of new digital technologies would unleash into the 21st century. The 1980s was
followed by three decades of the irrational exuberance: the dot.com boom and bust, Rudolf Giuliani’s Zero Tolerance policing, the attack on the World Trade Center, mounting evidence of the irreversibility of climate change, the
financial meltdown of 2008, and the occupation of Wall Street last year. This chapter unfolds the process of the recycling of New York City’s urban form in three stages of design research following of the introduction of electronic trading on Wall Street: damage control, where new forms of practice engaged
with the “urban leftovers” in the wake of massive gentrification in the 1980s; seizing the means of production involved the beginnings of digital design practice in the 1990s, and finally the possibilities of the twittering social activism of today which began at the start of the 21st century creating new forms
of inclusive urbanisms based on broad civic participation in design activism.

In the early 1970s, the “graffiti movement” made its way to New York City in the form of “tagging.” The New York City graffiti movement’s popularity grew, but problems in the city began to mount. The city faced severe... more

In the early 1970s, the “graffiti movement” made its way to New York City in the form of “tagging.” The New York City graffiti movement’s popularity grew, but problems in the city began to mount. The city faced severe weather, fiscal crises, and violence in the 1970s that resulted in economic, political, racial, and social chaos. With the rise of graffiti, the appearance of unrefined writing and imagery on public spaces became an easy target for the city’s prevalent unemployment, poverty, crime, and violence during the 1970s and 1980s. Graffiti consumed almost all of New York City public spaces, covering buses and subway trains, government buildings, schools, sidewalks, and streets. The “broken windows” theory developed among politicians that linked the city’s dirty and disheveled spatial appearance with social disorder. City politicians attacked graffiti in hopes of eliminating the economic, political, racial, and social turmoil of the city. Even with success in eliminating a majority of the graffiti by the end of the 1980s, the same problems of the city remained. Consequently, the “broken windows” theory was incorrect. Graffiti had become a scapegoat for New York City’s urban crisis and was not the cause for the city’s urban decay in the 1970s and 1980s.

Paper delivered at Tamiment Center for the United States and the Cold War seminar, 5 April 2016

Anneke Jans Bogardus (c1605-1663) owned a farm of 62 acres on Manhattan Island. Sometime after 1697, this land became the property of Trinity Church. For 200 years (from 1738 to 1935), various descendants of Anneke Jans claimed to retain... more

Anneke Jans Bogardus (c1605-1663) owned a farm of 62 acres on Manhattan Island. Sometime after 1697, this land became the property of Trinity Church. For 200 years (from 1738 to 1935), various descendants of Anneke Jans claimed to retain ownership of the farm, and sought to recover it through legal action. Their extraordinary efforts, displaying a remarkable mixture of faith, righteousness, stubbornness, naiveness, and delusion, are chronicled here. It is not my purpose to judge the merits of their claim - the legal questions have long been settled - but rather to document this fascinating episode in the history of a large and distinguished family.

Published in H-Environment Roundtable Reviews in January 2016. Part of a really interesting and creative initiative to take advantage of some of the possibilities of the internet by publishing multiple reviews of a particular book and... more

Published in H-Environment Roundtable Reviews in January 2016. Part of a really interesting and creative initiative to take advantage of some of the possibilities of the internet by publishing multiple reviews of a particular book and having the author respond.

Through an examination of the phenomenological effects brought on by moving within Vessel and considering some of the architectural precedents the structure indexes, I maintain that this new interactive work calls attention to itself... more

Through an examination of the phenomenological effects brought on by moving within Vessel and considering some of the architectural precedents the structure indexes, I maintain that this new interactive work calls attention to itself while serving the interests of developers in their failed attempts to make Hudson Yards a meaningful civic site.

During the twentieth century, Jacob Riis's once-widely-acknowledged role as father of the urban small-parks movement receded in historical significance in favor of his contributions to journalism, photography, housing reform, and... more

During the twentieth century, Jacob Riis's once-widely-acknowledged role as father of the urban small-parks movement receded in historical significance in favor of his contributions to journalism, photography, housing reform, and settlement work. This pattern overlooks the central importance that Riis himself placed on parks and playgrounds activism in his broader social agenda, at one point calling it "the logical sequel to 'How the Other Half Lives.'" This essay examines how Riis, through his efforts to provide New York's tenement districts with "breathing spaces," refashioned eminent domain from a rhetorical concept into a potent tool for reformers to assert control over working-class urban spaces. It also considers the impact of these projects on the working-class denizens of Riis's proposed park sites, who viewed their homes in a markedly different light.

Published at H-Socialisms.

This paper explores how disaster relief was carried out in New York City in the immediate aftermath of the Titanic's sinking. The paper is the first part of a larger project (now in progress) on short- and long-term aid for those... more

This paper explores how disaster relief was carried out in New York City in the immediate aftermath of the Titanic's sinking. The paper is the first part of a larger project (now in progress) on short- and long-term aid for those survivors who remained in the United States.

Labor and social historiography paid attention to tenants' strikes throughout history, but comparative studies remain scarce. Case studies are important to help us understand the peculiarities of past struggles, but broader assessments... more

Labor and social historiography paid attention to tenants' strikes throughout history, but comparative studies remain scarce. Case studies are important to help us understand the peculiarities of past struggles, but broader assessments are also critical to evaluate the general trends that shaped working-class resistance in different times and places. Drawing upon a variety of secondary and primary sources, this article examines the 1907-1908 tenants' strikes in Buenos Aires and New York. Although most of the participants were unaware of the events taking place more than 8,500 km away, both strikes shared many commonalities. Thousands of tenants, many of them migrants, with a strong prominence of women, acted together in order to put an end to the voracious and predatory rule of landlords. Facing attacks from the media and the state, they were forced to build on their experiences of resistance in order to develop the necessary organizational resources to accomplish their goals. The article focuses on the peculiarities of urban development and working-class formation in both cities, on the motley population that filled its tenement houses and conventillos, on the role played by socialist and anarchist organizers, on the reaction of the state and the ruling class towards the tenants' struggles, and on the prominent role played, in both cases, by migrant workers and women. Its goal is to highlight similarities and differences of these two cases of tenants' strikes, in order to enrich our understanding of the global historical roots of the ongoing struggle against landlords and capitalist market forces.

This pamphlet seeks to deepen our conception of Elias Hicks (1748 — 1830) beyond the mere “farmer” imagined by historians. It seeks to illuminate how Hicksite theology expressed the commercial values of the New York seaport during the Age... more

This pamphlet seeks to deepen our conception of Elias Hicks (1748 — 1830) beyond the mere “farmer” imagined by historians. It seeks to illuminate how Hicksite theology expressed the commercial values of the New York seaport during the Age of Sail, a world now gone with the wind — a forgotten way of life, so different from our own. In doing so, we shall touch the essence of our beliefs about human sexuality, and deepen our appreciation of Quakerism’s unique contribution to modern society: an historic advocacy of the sanctity of individual conscience.

This article is a collective effort on the authors' part to remember KISS, one of the most important hard-rock bands of the 1970s and 1980s. Influenced by the glam-rock movement that preceded its rise, arguably KISS was the first major... more

This article is a collective effort on the authors' part to remember KISS, one of the most important hard-rock bands of the 1970s and 1980s. Influenced by the glam-rock movement that preceded its rise, arguably KISS was the first major act in rock music history to present rock music as Entertainment Product first and music only second. We discuss the original, democratic concept of the Fab Four-Gene, Paul, Ace and Peter-as well as Gene Simmons' and Paul Stanley's subsequent American Dream ideology. We go on to analyse the current version of the band in the light of the original line-up and appearance. We find that the KISS fan base is divided with some fans accepting Simmons' current view that the four masked personas can be utilized by anyone chosen by the band's leadership; a second group that tries to correct the alleged historical injustices committed against former band members Ace Frehley and Peter Criss; and a third group that is cynical about the current version of KISS but finds it fruitless to rehash old debates (since any proffered solutions not supported by the current band leadership are unlikely to come to pass).